*Whew.... okay to start off, many apologies for my month-long hiatus from posting. Here's a highlight of my activites since my last big post:
1) 4th of July Fireworks on the National Mall...
2) Ford's Theater...
3) Arlington National Cemetery...
4) The National Archives...
5) Hung out with Winnie and her sister when they were in town for their weeklong chinese fob bus tour...
6) Visited Grace and hung out with Vidhya in New York City!! (More pics to come from this one)...
7) Met Senator Diane Feinstein at one of her weekly contitutent breakfasts...
8) ...and of course, Boston...
Haha so maybe I'll put up more pics and stuff if I find the time but time is limited these days... between work and LSAT class, I have little time on the weekdays to update this hizzah... but I shall give it a try.
[---]
Sooooo... lemme just say that Boston is a kick-ass city. The weather the week we were there was beautiful (though I'm sure its a different story in the winter...). My travelling companions included Tyler, Richard, Tiffany, Relic, and Annie.
We took a bus from the Democratic Party Headquarters Friday afternoon, leaving around 4:00pm (two freeking hours late). We arrived Saturday morning at 2:00am... haha we didn't get to bed in our hostel until around 4:00...
Here's our glorious hostel. It was ghetto in the ghettoest sense. We were crammed in a 6-person bedroom, except one of the beds was taken by this old, bald guy we nicknamed "Elmer" (since we never really actually talked to him). Poor Annie had to sleep alone in a separate bedroom with 5 other girl-strangers.
Here's our room. It smelled.
BUT the advantage was that we only had to pay $30 a night, which was a bargain considering that all of the other hotels were either booked or super expensive.
So on Saturday, we woke up early, sleepy as hell, to go to Democratic GAIN training. GAIN stands for "Grassroots-something-something-somethine," and it was just a fancy way of saying that the Democratic Party needed as many peons as possible to go door to door threatening people if they didn't vote for Kerry. The only reason we went was because at the end of the GAIN training weekend on Sunday, they were giving out tickets toto a jumpoff party at Club Avalon where a bunch of celebrities were scheduled to speak. I'll get to that later. Anwyays, GAIN training was boring, but at least we got nifty junk like lanyards and a carabiner:
The jumpoff party on Sunday was crazy. We waited outside the club for about 3 hours as they let people enter in a trickle. We still prolly woulda been waiting outside if it weren't for someone that Tiffany knew from Rock the Vote that jumped us to the front of the line. While we waited, we thrilled to the sounds of the Boston Red Sox game (Fenway Park was just across the street and I think they were playing the Yankes), as well as the protests of crazy quack right- and left- wing people like this guy:
HAHA oh man those people crack me up...
Anyways, inside the club, we got to see a few political and regular celebrities like Natalie "my wife" Portman, the Kerry daughters, John Edwards' eldest daughter, and Rev. Al Sharpton. Bill and Hillary ended up a no-show, which was a big letdown. Even if they had come though, I still think that Natalie Portman was the highlight of the evening:
On Monday, Tyler and I met with Michael Dukakis. He was our professor Winter Quarter at UCLA, but he lives in Boston. In case you didn't read the little link down there, he was the governor of Massachusetts, and ran for president against George H. W. Bush (Dubya's Dad) in 1988. In case you also didn't know, he lost. Professor Dukakis is a great guy, nonetheless. He took Tyler and I on a personal tour of the city, narrating with all kinds of history and little factoids that could only come from someone who's lived there all his life. He also bought us lunch at Northeastern University (where he teaches when he's not at UCLA). He also said that he would get back to us about getting a couple of tickets for the Democratic National Convention...
We parted ways in the afternoon, and Tyler and I took the opportunity to see the city. We went up to Bunker Hill, the site of the first battle of the Revolutionary War. Today, there stands this tall-ass obelisk monument thingie, and inside it is 294 steps, one for each of the people who died in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Tyler and I climbed the whole damn thing, and after catching our breath at the top, I was able to grab a few awesome shots of the city and the harbor:
We also went to the USS Constitution ship and museum, but halfway through, one of the guys who worked for Dukakis called to tell us to come to the professor's house to pick up our ticket for the Democratic National Convention. We scrambled over there and ended up in the middle of a "Greek-Americans for Kerry" party being put on by Dukakis and his wife. We got our credentials and then took a picture with the governor:
That evening, we went to the Fleet Center. It was awesome.
The keynote speakers that night were Hillary and Bill Clinton, and unlike Sunday night at the Avalon, they actually showed up. Tyler and I were on the floor of the convention when they were giving their speeches, right next to the delegation from Maine...
Some other cool things at the convention included a tribute to September 11, where everyone lit these little squeeze light things that were supposed to represent cigarette lighters. Mine is sitting on my desk as we speak...
We also ran in to former Governor Gray Davis. Yeah, he's a loser, but hey, he's a celebrity:
If you go to the Democratic National Convention website, you can see the speeches from every night. I thought that Clinton's was actually quite good.
Oh yeah. Here's one more pic of Tyler and I at the Convention:
I think that I would very much like to try to get to the 2008 National Convention, wherever it is.
Tuesday, we packed up and checked out of our hostel. We all went around the city for a couple of hours, then met up at the bus stop for our trip home. Overall, it was a kickass weekend, and definitely a once-in-a-lifetime deal... or at the very least, once-every-four-years-in-a-lifetime... 
[---]
Even as I type this, Becky is on her way to visit for the weekend. Its gonna be fun because even though i've been here for 6 weeks (!), there's still a lot that I haven't seen that she's gonna show me... DC, here I come!
[---] | 
